Golf course owners commonly offer four-wheel electric golf carts to their customers for transportation during a round of golf. Golf carts have a small, lightweight body for enabling extended use without need of recharging and for minimizing damage of golf course turf. Typically, carts include a small hooded section over the front wheels, an open passenger compartment, and an open storage area between the rear wheels for securing golf club bags. Two or more narrow struts extend up from the body to support a roof panel for sheltering the passengers and their bags.
For added convenience of the golfers, carts are often fitted with various accessories including containers for cold storage of beverages and dry storage of sand and seed mix used for repairing divots. Such containers typically include a box having a means for attachment to the golf cart, a hinged cover for protecting contents from heat or moisture, and a U-shaped handle for carrying while off of the golf cart. Convenient use of the container requires clearance for cover rotation to the fully opened position for access to the contents of the box. Often, however, clearance is inadequate due to proximity with the passenger seat, golf cart framework, golf bag holder, or another accessory. For example, the current model Yamaha golf cart includes an optional cooler that cannot be fully opened due to interference with the frame of an optional club cover accessory.
The challenge of mounting accessory containers within the restricted space and limited framework of a golf cart has been partially addressed by the prior art. Tyrer, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,601,745, teaches a soft-shell cooler for strapping to the front hood of a golf cart. Lecoq, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,066,363, describes a tray for mounting of a cooler to the steering column of a golf cart. While these inventions provide a mounting solution for a beverage cooler, they are not suitable for sand mix which is generally stored in hard-shell containers outside the passenger compartment so they can be used conveniently without sullying the cart. A preferred location for mounting accessory containers is on the side of the cart directly behind the passenger seat. Beverage coolers and sand mix containers can be provided interchangeably at this location and are often designed to fit a common bracket for reducing production cost. Hardy et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 8,356,789 B2 teaches a mounting method in this location where mounting bosses are integrated to the plastic frame directly behind the seat. This method has been used on the Club Car Precedent golf cart. It would be cost prohibitive to employ this method on an existing golf cart design where these features are not provided by the golf cart manufacturer. It is preferable to mount a cooler or sand bucket to rigid framework in the location described above to ensure long-term durability of the mount. This is possible and common practice for the EZ-Go TXT model where a large aluminum frame member is present. There are, however golf cart designs such as the EZ-Go RXV, where framework is not present in this location. One solution to this problem that is commonly employed is to mount the accessory directly to the top surface of the rear fender. This is disadvantageous because the fender is considered to be a cosmetic surface. Mounting an accessory to the fender requires drilling through the surface causing permanent damage. Additionally, the cooler bracket resting on the top surface of the fender could abrade the surface causing further damage. Alternatively, a large bracket could be employed to reach from the existing framework directly adjacent to the seat to the desired cooler mount location, but this would be cost prohibitive, and would occupy too much of the limited space available in this area. Thus, there is a need to provide a compact cost effective bracket to facilitate mounting an accessory in this area without causing damage to cosmetic surfaces.